"When you do have some power, you can lose the sense of how you’re behaving and who you are, and you don’t want to do that. It’s dangerous."

In her early 30s when she became the first female management supervisor at J Walter Thompson — an advertising agency — Beers learned that a colleague thought that her management style was too menacing.

Beers began observing herself and realized that she was indeed projecting an "I really mean business" persona, which she said she picked up from a previous boss. She began consciously correcting certain behaviors like interrupting people during meetings and talking too much.

"Nothing’s more helpful than finding out how others see you. If you can conduct that exercise in an impersonal way, you have information you can’t get any other way."

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